stay with us. >>> thank you, rachel. i have been looking forward to this since before we even launched the show. tonight i'll talk with two men who contributed to a singular work of art 45 years ago that still moves a film audience to this day and change the way we think about the world, our place in it and our place beyond it. every actor, myself included, spends their career striving to make one movie, just one, that achieves true immortality. i love stanley cooper's 2001 "space odyssey" because the people who made it aspire to greatness, just the way it looked established a new benchmark for the wart form, the sterile beauty created by anthony masters,er earnest lang and their crew. steven spielberg called it the big bang that inspired my generation's race to space, the library of congress selected it for preservation in the national film registry. the american film institute ranked it the 15th greatest film of the last 100 years and it was named one of the 45 great films ever made by the vatican. 2001 showed us in pe